Childrens Magic by Pyari

Getting Ready for the Show

March 23, 2002

It's 5 minutes past five in the afternoon and I'm with Pyari Mohan Prabhu, temple president of ISKCON Hartford, and his 15 year old daughter, Nila. We're in a hall filled with tables, and around each table are a bunch of Cub Scouts and their parents, eating. Pyari and Nila are setting up for the magic show, soon to begin.

Pyari Mohan is a professional magician, or "Illusionist," as magicians refer to themselves. People pay Pyari to do shows at birthday parties and other events, and he earns an income to maintain his family this way.

Nila is the same age I was when I was a magician. When I was a teenager I had a closet full of magic tricks that my father and I bought at a local magic store. I also had an advertisement in the paper and used to charge $15 to do shows at birthday parties. I think Pyari Mohan charges around $150 per show. This show he charged $170. Inflation. Or maybe he's a better magician than I was at Nila’s age.

Pyari Mohan's got several trunks of gear on the small stage, and he and Nila are busy setting things up while no one is paying attention to them. Then they'll do seemingly amazing and impossible feats. Of course, if you really knew how he did the tricks they wouldn't be so amazing or impossible, but that's part of the entertainment, and why people pay to see magic shows.

"Children's Magic by Pyari" his yellow colored business card reads. "Put a little MAGIC in your next party with live rabbit and doves." There's a website for Pyari Mohan's business listed at the bottom of the card: www.Childrens-Magic.com.

The Magic Words - The Show Begins

Pyari makes everyone say the Magic Words "Radha Govinda." He gets the whole audience to yell this. Then he does a trick.

The show has begun now, and he's pulling colored ribbons in and out of his hand and apparently "merging" them all into one ribbon.

He just told the audience he was going to turn a red cloth into a white one. He got everyone to say "Radha Govinda" and suddenly a white dove flew out from behind the cloth. One of the kids said that he must have chanted the wrong magic words.

Now he's got a little 7 year old girl named Jessica on the stage. He's rolling a newspaper into a cone, and now pouring milk into the cone. Then he turned the newspaper cone upside down on Jessica's head, and there was no milk in it.

He's doing a card trick now. Now a coin trick with a giant coin. Everyone has to say "Radha Govinda." Now another card trick. The cards are a little small for this hall.

"Now I need another volunteer," Pyari says. "Someone who doesn't mind his finger getting cut off." A Cub Scout named Steven comes up and Pyari Mohan does a finger cutting off trick. Somehow the kid still seems to have ten fingers when he goes to sit down.

Now he's doing a couple of rope tricks. Always he's getting the kids to chant "Radha Govinda" which he says very mysteriously.

Now he's pulling things out of an empty cylinder.

One trick, where he folds a dollar bill up into little sections, he gets us to chant Radha-Govinda with each fold. When he unfolds the bill it magically has converted into a one hundred dollar bill.

Now he's brought the "molecule chamber" onto the table on the stage, which is just a square box. He puts a dove inside the box and gets everyone to chant the magic words "Radha Govinda" to "get the machine to work." When he takes the box apart the bird is gone.

Another volunteer "who doesn't mind getting an arm chopped off" is called to the stage. Vincent volunteered, a young man, looks about 11 or 12 years old. Of course, somehow Vincent walks away with both his arms still attached, even though Pyari put his arm inside a machine and apparently cut it off.

"Project the mind from your mind to her mind. Concentrate on it," Pyari tells his volunteer, as he has his daughter Nia stand in the corner with her back to the audience. The volunteer picks a card, and Nila figures out what card it is.

Pyari just cut a kid in half by "pulling a rope through" him. Somehow the kid remained in one piece, even though the rope seemingly passed through his body. Afterwards the kid said he "felt good" even though the rope had passed right through him.

After the show a kid ran by me chanting, "Radha Govinda." Pyari Mohan is a magician who really does have “magic words.”